"Those" Homeless People

If you've driven around Pensacola for any length of time, you have no doubt seen at least a few local homeless sitting or standing roadside, often near high-volume intersections.  Some are holding a sign and hoping to earn enough money to buy something to eat....others are seen just sitting, alone or in groups, by the sides of the roads because they simply have nowhere else to go.  The homeless in our community have been getting a lot of press lately, as the Pensacola City Council and Escambia County Commission have been working overtime trying to pass anti-panhandling ordinances and other regulations limiting where people can sit, lie down, or "camp" without being fined (or worse).  And while the press may bring attention to the already-obvious fact that we have homeless in our community, it's not doing anything to fix the problem.

I don't understand why society spends so much time trying to take more and more away from these people who already have so little!  As a society, we spend millions more annually on providing food, shelter, and health care for our pets than what we spend on aid for the homeless!  How could we have forgotten that these people are still people?

While we're climbing into our clean, safe beds each night with stomachs full of nutritious food, it's easy to feel like that "homelessness" thing could never happen to us.  But we're wrong to be so sure.

"7 out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless."  ~Pras Michel

It occurs to me that, thanks to society's mass dehumanization of the homeless, many do not have an accurate idea of exactly who these homeless are.  I had only a very loose understanding of this myself, so I decided to do some research.  Let me share with you some of the basic statistics I found.

Statistics About Homelessness

& Related Subjects

• The number of people in the U.S. who were in poverty in 2005: 38,231,521.  True, poverty and homelessness are not the same.  Plenty of us (myself included) earn pay that still qualifies us as impoverished, yet are lucky enough to have homes and meals every day.
• The percentage of those people who were children: 36%.  As a parent, this scares the heck out of me and absolutely breaks my heart.
• The estimated number of people in the U.S. who are homeless for any period of time in a given year: 3.5 million.  This number may not even be high enough because of the difficulty in accurately counting a transient population.
• Percentage of homeless that have been homeless for less than two years: 70%.
• Percentage of homeless that have been homeless for less than six months: 40%.
• Percentage of homeless that live in vehicles: 59.2%.
• That live in makeshift housing (tents, cardboard boxes, etc): 24.6%.
• Percentage of homeless that live in the same city in which they became homeless: 75%.  So, all you cities who are passing these laws against the homeless hoping they'll "just go away"....where do you think they can go?
• Percentage of homeless people that are employed: 13%.  That's right.  You can be employed and still be unable to afford housing.
• Estimated percentage of homeless diagnosed with a mental illness: 16-22%. The vast majority of these people have no access to treatment.  And this number doesn't include the unknown number of homeless who have an undiagnosed mental illness.
• Percentage of the overall U.S. population diagnosed with a mental illness sometime in their lives: 40%.  This number, to me, just reinforces the fact that many of the homeless mentally ill are undiagnosed.
• Estimated percentage of homeless that are substance abusers: 26-40%.  See....so many people assume that all homeless are addicts, and that simply isn't true.
• Percentage of homeless men that are veterans: 40%.  The entire nation should be ashamed of this.
• Percentage of U.S. cities whose estimated homeless population is much greater than number of beds in emergency shelters: 100%.  Yep, Pensacola too.
• Percentage of homeless who are single men: 51%.
• Families with children: 30%.  I cannot imagine the heartbreak of raising your children without a safe place to live and without knowing where the next meal might come from—or when.
• Single women: 17%.  These women are particularly susceptible to being abused or preyed upon.
• Likelihood to have a personal or property crime committed by a homeless person vs. by a housed person: 10% less likely.
• Percentage of homeless people that receive Social Security or General Assistance (food stamps): 20%.  Which means those other 80% are on their own.
• Average amount a homeless person receives in income a month: 300 dollars.  Per month.  Even a minimum wage job (working full time) makes at least double this amount in take-home pay.

"Was I always going to be here? No I was not. I was going to be homeless at one time, a taxi driver, truck driver, or any kind of job that would get me a crust of bread. You never know what's going to happen."  ~Morgan Freeman

So before you turn your nose up at the homeless you drive past every day, before you assume they must be addicts or murderers or just plain lazy, step back and remember those times when you didn't know how you were going to get all your bills paid.  Remember the worry and stress of not having enough money.  Now multiply that worry by how many bills you have and then multiply again by 3 or 4 months.  That's how you, too, could end up on the side of the road, hoping you'll get lucky enough to eat today.

Sources: The National Coalition for the Homeless; National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Homelessness in the United States.